Thursday, 5 March 2015

Jaipur- Part 1


So we landed at Jaipur airport in the evening, and took a taxi to the hotel. As we had paid yet again a fairly small amount for the hotel, we didn't have high hopes for it. However, we were very pleasantly surprised when the taxi pulled up outside a very quirky looking building, adorned with trinkets and souvenirs and the air around the building heavy with incense. The manager of the hotel showed us to our room which was so blue it looked like it had been decorated by smurfs, and informed us we just needed to call to reception for hot water (so nice being back in the modern world) and also to call for room service (luxury!!) otherwise there was a rooftop restaurant. On exploring the room, we also had a working TV, an actual duvet and a mattress and pillows that Lenny Henry would be proud of. After we had finished celebrating, we went to investigate the rooftop restaurant. The menu offered such delicacies as tomato cup a soup and maggi noodles (indian equivalent of super noodles), although with many traditional Indian dishes also. Okay, 5 star restaurant it was not but it was cheap so all is forgiven. And at least the chef was enthusiastic.

Our interesting hotel


First thing on the list of things to do was to get some laundry done, by an actual launderette as a nice treat for ourselves. We took the items to the laundry place down the road, which charged per item, and the man in the shop proceeded to count the items to tell us the price. “..17, 18, 19, 21, 22…” We stopped him and told him that he missed out 20 and needed to recount. So he started again. “..17, 18, 19, 21, 22…” After this happened three times, we counted with him and eventually got him to accept there was such thing as the number 20. Not sure whether this was an intentional error or not, but he did it very convincingly, and managed to do it again when collecting the items again.

The next day we went out to see what Jaipur had to offer. We looked at a map, found an area that looked fairly promising called MI road, and jumped in a rickshaw to head there. We explored the area and found a market place. I had decided I was in dire need of some indian style tops, so began hunting for them. However, shopping in India is not like shopping in England. In England, you can walk into a shop, barely being acknowledged by the sales assistants working there, and browse through all items which are on display at your leisure. If you don’t see anything you like it is no big deal. In India, there is always someone waiting to pounce on anyone that turns their head in the direction of the shop, and will drag you in to the shop where every item is neatly folded and stacked so there is no chance of being able to just browse. They will then start tearing out items of clothing from the neat stacks, if you like them or not, spreading them out over all surfaces and making a huge mess. I think the idea is that they hope you will feel so bad for causing such chaos, and knowing it will take them hours to refold all the items, and buy something as a gesture of appreciation.

As most people are aware, I have very specific requirements for my clothes. Not only the colour, but the exact shade, patterns and shape have to inspire me and sometimes even if these criteria are filled, if I don’t have an instant ‘spark’ then I am not interested, nor can I be persuaded. This is also very difficult to explain to a local market stall seller who is pulling everything off the shelves for me, and painful for everyone at the end when there is nothing they have that I want to buy. So we start the long process of trawling through every market stall, leaving a trail of disappointment behind us. Eventually, I see a top that I actually quite like…right shade, right pattern, great. Only thing to do next is to try it on. Unfortunately, the size isn’t great, I managed to squeeze into it but it was definitely too small for me. The market seller had a different opinion;

“Great size, perfect size!”

Despite my protests he insisted that I was wrong and nothing would persuade him otherwise. I started to try and explain my reasons but he was not having it, and we had to run out of the shop with the shopkeeper shouting down the road at me “Perfect size!!” A few days later I also realized I needed another bra, in which a similar situation occurred, and the man in the shop was insistent that any and all of the bras in his selection would fit me. Its strange how more Indian men know my size than I do myself.

Flower market in Jaipur


Anyway, so we carried on walking through the marketplace, getting hassled from every market stall we walk past, until somebody quietly asked “Excuse me, but can you tell me why tourists don’t want to speak to Indian people?” I turned around, feeling like it would be rude not to reply and thinking how nice it was not to be hassled into buying things. So we stopped to have a chat with this guy who said he was an accounting graduate who was spending a bit of time with his cousin working in one of the stalls. He assured us he did not want to sell us anything, he just wanted to sit down and have chai with us and have a chat. So we agreed, and conveniently the only place to sit was in his cousin’s stall. He brought us some chai and we talked for about half an hour, all the while thinking how nice it was not to feel like we had to buy something. Then the inevitable happened, and a selection of pashminas started getting laid out. And they did have a green one in the right shade and the right pattern, and it was soft. So their trick worked, and I bought the pashmina (although not without haggling them to under ¼ of the original price!). The guy who was basically our best friend at that point also told us as a gift he would arrange a rickshaw guide to take us around the city the day after, for only 400 rupees. I still have no idea if this was a good price or not, but we agreed to it anyway.  There was one final attempt of dressing me in a sari just because they wanted a picture of me in a sari, which was conveniently very expensive, but when this didn’t work we said our goodbyes and continued walking.

Trying to sell us the beautiful sari and hat combo


Not even 5 minutes later we were stopped by 2 guys in a rickshaw who asked us “Why do tourists not want to speak to Indian people?” Here we go again…. Although we are too polite and English to ignore it, so we get dragged in again. This time, the guy just wanted us to sit in his rickshaw and he bought us chai and we managed to get away with not buying anything off of him. He did have the loudest laugh and the most violent hi fives though, which were both used every 10 seconds, so we left with sore hands and ears. Having escaped the second guy, we walked further down the street and while buying ice cream, was approached a third time. This guy was older and didn’t initially seem like he had anything to sell, but told us he was a puppeteer and wanted to show us pictures of his shows, which were conveniently in his shop. We were then subjected to an albums worth of photos, most of which were him in Goa, and then he wanted to show us how his puppets worked and play us some music. We made a few attempts to leave but he didn’t stop talking, and again being English and far too polite, we did not feel we could go. We insisted we did not want to buy any puppets, and he accepted this, but wanted us to have miniature elephant souvenirs in exchange for something we had on us, or for us to buy him a beer. We told him we didn’t want to do this, and he started getting angry, so we made our quick exit and got into the first rickshaw we could find in case he started chasing us. We got back to the hotel feeling pretty bewildered, and unsure how we were going to dodge the people trying to sell us things when they all seemed so friendly and we are so bad at being rude.

Puppet skills


The next day, as arranged, we had a rickshaw waiting outside our hotel for us to take us to the sights around Jaipur. So we set off in his rickshaw which had a pretty interesting selection of music which the driver played at full volume. It started off with some hindi music, then moved onto techno, and then some power ballads, including cher and the backstreet boys. It felt like being in Luke’s car when he drives around Ashtead with the windows down playing magic fm radio. First off, Amber Fort. This is one of the most famous forts in Rajasthan, and although we are not fanatics of old buildings and architecture, it was very pretty with some nice views and had a maze of corridors to wander around inside.





 After this, we were taken to the water palace. Well, I say taken there, we were taken to a roadside to take pictures of it, and it was classed as an attraction. He also took us to an ‘elephant village’ which basically was an area of dusty land where they were keeping a few elephants for tourists to have elephant rides and other elephant based activities for a fee. I wasn't too keen on the setup, so we left pretty quickly. Finally we were taken to a temple, known as the monkey temple. Unfortunately for some unknown reason the rickshaw driver we had hired for the day had to leave, so we were dropped off there and assured we could get a cheap rickshaw back. The monkey temple was at the top of a hill and although we saw a few monkeys on our walk up to the temple, there were not many and there was no monkeys in the temple itself. The temple was nothing that amazing but it did have a great view of the city, so we left our shoes at the entrance of the temple and sat on a bench and looked at the view for a while. Some twenty calm minutes passed, when suddenly a little Indian girl ran up to us and exclaimed “shoe monkey up!” we followed her to the temple entrance and realized one of my sandals had been stolen by one of the monkeys. I stood there helplessly while Jonno and a small boy went to rescue it, and five minutes later came back successful. Crisis averted. We started wandering back down the hill and spotted quite a few monkeys, and were so entertained by them we ended up sitting on a wall watching them. Some of them came and sat pretty much next to us, they didn't seem bothered by us. We watched them running up and down trees, grooming each other, and stealing washing from the washing lines. When two dogs started growling at each other, one of the monkeys got excited by the prospect of a fight and ran up to a tree, shaking the branches excitedly. Then another tried to do the same but didn't have the same strength so barely got the branches to move, so skulked away sheepishly. Anyway, we watched the monkeys for a few hours and then noticed a car driving up and the monkeys gathering around it. A woman got out of the car with a mass of bananas, and started distributing them around. This made the monkeys very excited, and a few fights broke out. The car left, but the monkeys were now hyped up on bananas and were looking for trouble. One of them snuck up behind me, looking up at me, which I thought was sweet until it reached up and grabbed one of my earrings from my ear, luckily one that came out easily, and ran off with it. Another one tried to grab my bag from me, and the only reaction I could think of was to tell it off like a naughty child. In response to this, it hissed at me so we took it as our cue to leave. Somewhere around the temple there is now a monkey wearing one earring feeling very pleased with itself.





As we had been abandoned by our rickshaw driver we went in search of a rickshaw to take us back to the hotel. We managed to find one who agreed to take us there, only to take us to the marketplace and refused to take us any further unless we paid him three times the price. We refused, and got out of the rickshaw without paying him anything, which he didn't seem too bothered about, in search for another rickshaw.

The next day was the day before the Holi festival, and we had heard that there may be an event being put on for tourists in preparation. Somebody had told us it was being held at the polo grounds, so when a rickshaw driver approached us and we asked if anything was happening at the polo grounds, he said “yes, yes” and told us he could take us there. After a short ride in the rickshaw, he pulled up next to some big gates and gestured for us to get out. It looked pretty empty, so we asked what event was happening here. He replied “all the tourist stuff” and then sped away. We had a brief look around, but the place was deserted. Obviously the ‘tourist stuff’ wasn't here. We started walking back towards the town, which was a lot further than we thought. After about 45 minutes of walking, we managed to hail a rickshaw and asked him if there was any events happening that day. He took us to another venue, which had a poster for an event taking place the day after, on actual Holi, and looked at us expectantly. So there seemed to be no event happening. We headed towards the old town to explore there, where they were building a bonfire and had music playing, but not much action still. We walked further and came across a temple, where there was a crowd of people chanting, singing and playing the drums, which we decided to join. The group of people leading the celebrations were old men, but they were prancing about like they were thirty years younger, some of whom were already covered in coloured powder. On our walk back towards the town, the bonfire had been lit and people were dancing around it. It seemed like the celebrations had begun, and we were looking forward to the next day of more of the same.

Getting a Holi bonfire ready

View of Jaipur


1 comment:

  1. Can't believe you didn't buy the sari and hat combo, a great look. I found the monkeys at that temple quite scary. You're looking a bit thin Diana, try and avoid any more Dengue. Love you both and miss you - particularly today as we have IT problems!

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